Here are some statistics I think you might find fascinating…

1. 70% of Facebook users came from outside the United States
2. > 1% of Facebook Users, use facebook to search for local businesses. (According to a local Social Media Survey.)
3. Of businesses surveyed locally, >10% say they have seen a benefit from Tweeting on Twitter. A Social Media Guru would argue that it’s because you’re not doing it right…

Sure you can argue there are a few benefits to Facebook, Twitter, Yelp etc… but the bottom line is there is not enough data to support any real networking benefit to small businesses.

I would argue that Twitter is great for B2B connections, Facebook… not so much. Facebook users are more concerned with their peeps updates then scooping out local business fan pages – period. Twitter had a very similar effect in a recent local survey.

Be very weary of ‘social media experts’ who promote cutting back on local online advertising (seo, ppc, Google local etc..) and focusing primarily on social media because it’s the ‘new revolution.’

What most ‘Social Media Experts or Social Media Guru’s’ fail to understand is Social Media and SEO work hand-in-hand. SEOs would know how Google Caffeine directly correlates with social media – a Social Media Expert wouldn’t. All they know is that if they follow 6500 people on Twitter, 5500 are most likely to follow back.. har har har.

This will lead into my next topic on why it’s a good idea to hire a SEO and not a Social Media Marketer for your next business endeavor.

Cheerio!

This is a post I found written at OpenPressWire.com – the words, I couldn’t have said better myself. Here are a few paragraphs and I highly encourage you to read the rest of the article by clicking the link above.

Are you tired of hearing it yet? I sure am. It seems Twitter has fostered an extreme steroid fed bacterial growth of social media experts, social media gurus and super follower magnates. Unfortunately there isn’t much of an antibiotic floating around to separate the experts from the idiots. If you weren’t aware already, most of these experts are just idiots that have found a stool to stand on and shout their garbled rehashed crap they read from TwiTips.com and rewrote it on their own “pretty” blog.

I believe there are five different types of what is perceived to be social media experts. Please note: I’m excluding the idiots above because they’re not experts and they don’t need to be discussed, just ignored.

Type One: Authoritative Expert

This first type of expert has the lucky ability of transferring their authoritative status in their field over into the social media world. Basically, they are a high profile executive, someone famous, someone with a TV show, radio show, have written books and had them published or they were found dancing to some stupid song on YouTube. This is an authoritative expert because they are an expert and master in something else. People flock to them in social media because they are comfortable with the brand, the person or know of their accomplishments. Examples: @joelcomm, @guykawasaki, @jimmyfallon, @aplusk (Ashton Kutcher) or the Numa Numa Guy (he really could have done something with this mainstream popularity)

If you’re into search engine optimization or Internet Marketing you can liken this type to what is called PageRank. PageRank is essetinally a ranking number based on how many links a website has, making it an authority on the subject. Once again, these sites can just crap out content and have it rank well because the rest of their site already has a power authority that can not be obtained overnight.

Chris Brogan is the President of New Marketing Labs and another of my my favorite bloggers. He wrote an interesting post that I couldn’t resist to re-post with some snippets.

The subject relates to the social media industry along with the factors that every one who uses Twitter claims to be a social media expert… Chris goes on to talk about some key components that are really required to be considered a SEO Expert – and I couldn’t agree more.

Here  are a few snippets from Chris Brogan’s blog titled “What I want a Social Media Expert to Know.”

Strategic

• Which department you think your role should fall into.
• How your role ties to marketing, PR, advertising, R&D, finance, HR, sales.
• What tasks you’d expect a community manager to perform, and how would you measure them.
• How you expect a company to engage in “the conversation,” and what processes will go into place to make any of that matter.
• How to turn blog posts into business leads.
• How to listen and find where people are talking about you.
• Ways to report your weekly listening and community work to a very senior level person in a huge company that has about 2 minutes of time to hear your briefing.
• Know about 100 people in the space who are doing something. The more diverse the profession and location, the better.
• How to launch and operate a blogger outreach campaign.
• How to tie other media into social media as an integrated campaign.

Tactical

• How to install a blog (pick your software) on a hosted server.
• How to edit the sidebar to include a widget, or an embed, or anything.
• How to create, edit, and post at least one other type of media besides text.
• At least five social network accounts active, including but not limited to: LinkedIn, Yahoo! Groups, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
• How to find and subscribe to a podcast WITHOUT using iTunes.
• Five stats worth knowing for any blog/website.
• How to structure a blog post so that humans and Google like it.